1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to a cooling device for an electronic component and more specifically to a integrated heat sink and fans for cooling a semiconductor device such as a computer processor.
2. Background of the Invention
Many current electronic components, such as computer processors, such as Intel's Pentium Pro processor, generate significant heat internally during operation which must be dissipated or the processor will fail or otherwise malfunction. There are several constrains on such cooling devices. Since it is desirable that the printed circuit board containing the processor plug into a conventional backplane and not occupy space reserved for other boards, the size of the cooling unit is limited. also, it is difficult to achieve a plentiful flow of air between the boards to adequately dissipate heat from the heat sink. Consequently, small heat sinks including an attached fan have been developed for attachment to processors.
However, there are still two major problems associated with the current art. First, fans are electro-mechanical devices that are subject to a failure rate significantly higher than pure electronic components. Since the cooling capacity of the heat sink is dependent upon the operation of the fan, failure of the fan results in failure of the processor. Second, some processors not only malfunction upon temperature buildup but are damaged. In these instances, failure of a fan results in the computer going down and the costly replacement of the processor. Third, many modern applications require that the processor be operating at all times. Should the computer go down, the application being performed will be irretrievably damaged resulting in considerable time and money loss.
Thus, it is desirable to have an improved cooling device for a processor such that the cooling device has a longer mean time between failures.
It is further desirable that the improved cooling device includes redundant components that, while the device is operation in situ, are easily inspectable for failure and independently replaceable such that the processor need never malfunction, fail or be damaged due to failure of the cooling device.